Obama Teaches Bush How to Create Jobs, Creates More in 2010 than Bush Did in 8 Years
You may have heard the news by now (it’s pretty big news) — new info out by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that 1.1 million jobs were created in 2010 under the Obama administration and a Democratic (though, severely obstructed) Congress. That’s more than the 1 million jobs the Bush administration created in total in the whole 8 years it was in charge of the U.S.
In December, the U.S. economy saw an increase of 113,000 private sector jobs, which resulted in the unemployment rate dropping from 9.8% to 9.4%, the steepest drop in one month since 1998 (when Clinton was president).
Who is all the time claiming that Democratic policies are job killers? Republicans, of course. But what to the statistics show?
I think even more significant than 2010 job growth, however, is the chart above as a whole, showing, very clearly, the job creation or job loss trend of the past few years, under Bush and then under Obama. It doesn’t take a genius to identify which administration was killing the economy and which is helping it.
How Do Clean Energy and Environmental Policies Influence the Economy?
Counter to what many Republican politicians will have you believe, clean energy and environmental policies are job creators, not job killers.
As we’ve reported numerous times here on Cleantechnica, clean energy investment creates many more jobs [pdf] than dirty energy investment. Studies have found that “the solar industry creates 5.65 jobs per million dollars in investment, the wind energy industry 5.7 jobs, and the coal industry only 3.96” and “wind and solar energy generate 40 percent more jobs per dollar invested.”
I’ve also covered the fact that environmental regulations create jobs and benefit the economy, and not only in the long term. Yes, EPA regulations that Republicans consistently claim will hurt the economy actually help it.
Concerning transportation, investment in high-speed rail is projected to generate billions and billions of dollars in economic growth and create hundreds of thousands of jobs according to the U.S. Conference of Mayors. Additionally, I recently covered over on our sister sites Ecolocalizer and Planetsave, respectively, the news that bicycling is a significant boon to the economy and that twice as many jobs are created for every dollar spent on bicycle or pedestrian projects than for every dollar spent on road projects.
The economy may be a complex thing, but clear ways to improve it have been identified. Of course, clear ways to improve the business and increase the staggering wealth of the richest of the rich, including those at the head of the fossil fuel industry, have been identified, too. And with a political system that gives more power to the rich, our politicians (many of them, than is) have a ‘hard time’ doing what is right instead of what keeps them in office.
Related Story: Clean Power = More Jobs
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